


everything that is on fire can't be saved

by river_of_words



Series: and all that remains in its place [1]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Anger, Angst, Blood and Injury, Fighting, Gallifrey, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt No Comfort, I think that covers it, Mild Blood, Suicidal Thoughts, Violence, almost forgot! yeah some (mostly) passive suicidal ideation! thats probably important to warn about, ao3 wants me to pick between minor or serious injuries, being really mean to your friends because you don't know how to deal with grief, grief-stricken 13 has a bad time and hurts some people and gets hurt in return, i just made 13 miserable for 7000 words, i tried to write hurt/comfort but i failed and it's just hurt, idk medium injuries?, im so sorry, injuries, memories are Bad, mild blood bad memories and targeting your anger at the wrong people, they both get hurt kinda badly and stay hurt for the whole thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-08
Updated: 2020-07-08
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:13:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25147522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/river_of_words/pseuds/river_of_words
Summary: When the Doctor tries to go back to Gallifrey to stand in the burning ruins of her home, AGAIN, the Tardis decides she's had enough and takes the wheel, leading them to crash on a deserted planet, where they have to find a way to work together for long enough to fix what's broken and get off the planet.Or: When the person you are angry with isn't available so you yell at the person who is available, but who doesn't deserve it.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor & The Doctor's TARDIS, Thirteenth Doctor/The Doctor's TARDIS
Series: and all that remains in its place [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1821742
Comments: 12
Kudos: 36





	everything that is on fire can't be saved

**Author's Note:**

> title stolen from here: http://www.playsinverse.com/catalog/exit-pursued.html  
> from the first play in the preview, which is titled 'One-Act Play In Which We Float Facedown In The Center Of A Lake, A Position Known As The Dead Man’s Float'

On the way to drop the fam off on the found-again moon of Poosh, the Tardis starts protesting. Or rather, starts involving an audience in her protests, which up to this point have been mostly imperceptible to human ears and eyes. Shaking and creaking in a barely convincing – yes, barely! you’re many things but an actress is not one of them! – and very textbook display of a Tardis on its last legs. Like a car sputtering and dying. _Very_ _melodramatically_. The Doctor rolls her eyes and pointedly wiggles the blue stabilisers.

The humans are alarmed anyway.

_see, i’m very convincing_

To humans, maybe.

_that’s all I need_

“Why is the Tardis shaking? Are we about to crash?”

The Tardis lands with a thump.

The Doctor grins triumphantly. “Not about to crash! Landed safe and sound.”

“What was that noise?”

“Nothing,” she says, maybe a little bit too fast. Met with incredulous looks, she amends: “Just needs an oil change.”

_you aren’t a very good actress either_

She tries not to be too obvious in her glaring at the Tardis. “I’ll fix it while you guys go swimming.”

The Tardis beeps.

Oh, was that not the plan?

“You’re not coming with us?”

_please just go with them_

“I need to change the oil.”

“Does the Tardis even use oil?”

Beeping loudly, a bunch of brightly coloured warning lights blink to life on the console, demanding attention. _no, i don’t! she’s a liar!_

The Doctor nods resolutely. “Yes!” She points at the warning lights. “Look! ‘Oil change required.’”

_at least I can convince humans, you’re not managing to even do that_

Six skeptically narrowed eyes looking at her. Would’ve been more if the Tardis had eyes.

“That could say literally anything.”

“Yeah, we can’t read the circle things.”

Mistake. She goes cold.

_no, don’t–_

She steps forward, making them step back towards the door.

“Couple of hours, have fun.” Flat voice, dead eyes. Well, she’s tried.

_barely_

She doesn’t even need hands to push them out the door. Her eyes are enough. She slams the door.

_stop doing that_

“Doing what.”

_it’s not their fault_

She starts setting the coordinates.

* * *

It’s not that the Tardis doesn’t want to go to Poosh, or any of the other places they’ve been. In fact, she’d love to go there and stay for a while. It’s just that she won’t be staying. She knows where the Doctor is planning on taking her after she’s dropped the gang off. Again. And that’s where she doesn’t want to go. She was asking the second time, persuading the third, demanding the fourth, negotiating the fifth, coaxing the sixth, imploring the seventh, pleading the eighth, and has been making her objections clear every free moment since then. When begging doesn’t work, she threatens. When that doesn’t work either, she flips back to begging. The Doctor has tuned her out at this point. She needs a more drastic strategy. So this time when the Doctor pulls the dematerialisation lever, the Tardis takes matters into her own not-hands and diverts their course mid-flight.

The Doctor is thrown off her feet when the Tardis sways due to the sudden change in direction.

“What do you think you’re–” She scrambles to get her hands back on the controls because she knows exactly what the Tardis is doing. She just hadn’t expected her to mutiny outright.

_it’s not a mutiny! i’m the ship!_

* * *

For weeks, this fight’s been going. Inbetween adventures she drags the gang through, restful outings she dumps them on, during nights on the Tardis, beneath their attempts at conversation which she flagrantly dodges, there’s the Tardis’s dread hanging thick in the air. Clinging to the walls, dripping off the pillars. The fam can’t see it, can’t feel it. The way the Tardis drags and slumps and moans. How she circles before landing, verifying their destination. How she suspiciously keeps track of the navigation every time they’re flying anywhere. Her mounting apprehension at the slightest indication that the Doctor’s planning to leave the fam alone somewhere for a couple of hours.

_we’ve been there enough_

“One more time.”

_you said that last time_

“I just need to see–”

_you know what it looks like_

“Maybe there are–”

_there aren’t._

“You don’t know that.”

_i do know. and you know._

A pause, then quietly: “Just one more time.”

A pause, then dismayed: _you drag sand in_

The Doctor scoffs and pulls the dematerialisation lever.

The Tardis has had enough. She’s turning this ship around.

“No, you’re not.”

The Doctor hangs onto the console with one hand and smashes a couple of buttons with the others. The Tardis shudders and shocks, almost comes to a standstill in the middle of the time vortex before spinning and accelerating again. She pulls herself over to a display.

“No! We’re not going back yet!”

She spins a wheel, turning them around again, and hangs onto it, trying to prevent the Tardis from taking control again.

But the Tardis has changed tactic and gone after the temporal motors. Being worked upon by both the manual controls and directly by the will of the Tardis the motors start groaning and whining, trying to comply with contradictory demands of the stubborn ship and equally stubborn pilot. Spinning uselessly like tires stuck in mud, pulling and stretching time like toffee.

“Let go! You’re going to break something!”

_you let go!_

The time rotor wheezes, halting and stuttering forward in shocks. Smoke trickles through the gaps in the floor.

“I’m serious! I don’t know where we’ll end up if–”

The temporal motors explode. She’s slammed into a coral pillar. Unconscious.

* * *

When she wakes up her lungs have already given up and her respiratory bypass system is about to join them. She can hardly see through the green smoke pushing its way into her eyes and throat and the cloister bells are ringing. She scrambles up and manages to stumble out the door as it slams behind her and another explosion rips through the Tardis. There’s the sickening crack of a coral pillar splitting apart and crashing down. The Tardis howls.

On her knees in the dirt she stares at the closed Tardis doors in wide-eyed shock as her lungs try to re-find their regular rhythm. She coughs for a while, eyes watering, throat burning, until she notices what she’s kneeling on and looks around. What _is_ she kneeling on? Where did they land? She stands up – come on legs, come on knees – looks desert-y, deserted. Couple of rocks, lots of dirt. With half a mind to ask the Tardis where they are, she turns around and hears the rumbling of something very heavy crashing in on itself like a house of cards. Dimension dam? Engine? Karaoke buses? Hopefully it’s the karaoke buses. Least time-space continuum threatening if it explodes, most disposable, and frankly, one time was enough. The Tardis screams. She winces and turns around. Like a coward.

“Just gonna see if there’s someone here,” she mutters, like it’s somehow more convincing if she says it out loud to whoever might be watching. “For... For help. Yeah...”

She has taken ten steps before she realises she might only be breathing – well, ‘breathing’, her lungs are not exactly doing their best work right now – because of the air shell around the Tardis. She pauses, considering.

Well.

Only one way to find out.

The Tardis moans behind her and she inhales sharply.

There’s not much she can do here anyway.

She keeps walking, expecting any moment to breathe out and find herself unable to breathe in again, but one hundred paces from the Tardis it still hasn’t happened. The atmosphere on this planet – or moon? – is probably breathable then.

With the adrenaline fading, and the barren landscape not providing much distraction for the memories she’s pretending not to be aware of lurking at the edges of her mind, she’s starting to feel the injuries. Her chest hurts. Especially when she breathes, especially on the left side. Oh, because– Right. Those pillars were really hard. She should put some kind of crashmat around those or something. Pillows, maybe. She tentatively reaches up to touch her side, which already feels like a mistake in the making even before the shooting pain leaves her gasping. Okay, no touching then. Got it. Her head is throbbing. Oxygen deprivation. Or concussion. Hopefully not a concussion. She hates concussions. They make time go all weird. Well, weirder than usual. Weird in a bad way.

The events from just before they crashed start slotting back into place. They’d been flying to –. The Tardis was whining and then protesting, and then they were fighting and then crashing. And now everything hurts.

Five hundred fourty-two paces later, having seen twelve large rocks, thirty-four smaller ones, a lot of dirt, and nothing else, the thought of having to take another step has grown unbearable and, deciding that – except for the two of them – there’s no one here, she turns around.

Oh right, now she still has to walk back. Ugh.

* * *

When she returns the doors are open and the smoke has been vented from the console room. She braces herself and looks inside. Where the console used to be is a messy, jagged wound. Three pillars broken, one has fallen half into the hole. There’s green and blue fluid coagulating on the floor. Painful cracks shot through the walls, broken pieces of glass and coral stuck in the goop. Red light pulses around the room, leaving gaps in its path where the lamps have burst. The cloister bells are still ringing. Faintly, exhausted. Like a call for help carried on every exhale.

_help_

_help_

_help_

She puts her hand on the doorframe and cautiously steps inside. The Tardis shudders.

_where were you_

“Looking for help.”

She steps over the dematerialisation lever, torn off and thrown through the room by the explosions. Her shoe sticks in the blue-green goop. She pauses to take in the destruction and her hearts ache. Her head throbs in time with the pulsing light. She pulls her shoe free from the sticky floor.

“Temporal motors. Well, we knew that,” she’s speaking quietly, like she is trying not to disturb a sick or injured person. Which she is.

“And the green stuff. Ruptured power cells?"

The Tardis only wheezes in response. The cloister bells cease.

She makes her way through the debris to the hole in the floor and cautiously kneels down to look over the edge. A ten-meter drop, ripped straight through the Tardis by the exploding temporal motors. Snapped cables and bundles of wires stick out of the sides of the tunnel like bare nerve endings, coated in glops of green goop.

It’s horrible. It hurts.

She takes a shaky, shallow breath. Lungs pressing up against broken ribs. She got lucky compared to the Tardis. Oh, why did she have to get lucky? Why couldn’t she just– get smashed all to pieces. The Tardis would’ve taken care of her. The Tardis would’ve brought her– where, where would she have brought her? Sheffield? Pick up the fam, then Sheffield? Let them see her like this? Like what? All broken and bruised and messy.

But no, this is her fault. She did this, she has to fix it now. Make it better. How? How is she going to do that? Alone, here, without supplies, or anyone to help. Take a breath – stupid lungs, stupid ribs – take another. Don’t get swallowed by the wave of panic and guilt building momentum in her gut, making its way up her throat into a pained little noise of anguish. Of Unfair. Of Why This, Now, on top of everything else.

 _help me,_ the Tardis whirs impatiently.

Right, right. Get up. Get moving. Be useful. “Yes,” she mumbles, voice rough, “I’m gonna–”, she struggles to her feet, wincing at the pain in her side. She has to get down there, see what’s left of the temporal motors–

_not much_

“I got that!”

–what else got blown up. Engine, that would be bad. The Tardis is okay so–

_i’m not okay._

“You’re _intact_ ,” she amends quickly, impatiently. “Matrix is fine?” It’s not really a question.

 _yes_ , the Tardis responds begrudgingly.

She nods and tries to take her coat off.

“Eye of Harmony?” _That_ is really a question. She holds her breath.

_stable_

Exhale. Coat is stuck. She doesn’t have full range of motion with her left arm.

“Engine?”

_fine_

It wasn’t all bad. Could have been worse. Could have been way worse. She doesn’t have to worry about the fate of the universe today. Be grateful for the little things. She manages to grab hold of her left sleeve behind her back and yanks. And curses. But the coat is off. Ribs throbbing, head throbbing, Tardis throbbing. She rolls up her sleeves. One thing at a time.

* * *

The assessment of ‘not much’ turns out to be more correct than either of them really wanted. All three temporal motors are shattered. That’s all she can see at first glance because everything is covered in blue... temporal... timey... substance... stuff, ugh it probably has a name but she can’t be bothered to recall. Clearing some of the blue goo away, the motors reveal themselves to be only _mostly_ utterly shattered. There are still some components that seem salvageable. She can get those out and re-use them. That saves the Tardis having to regrow some parts at least.

“I think some of this is reusable,” she gestures toward the motors, “but we don’t have all the parts.” She feels bad asking something of the Tardis in this state but there isn’t much choice–

_already started_

She clenches a fist, smothering fizzing frustration.

“Thank you,” she says, carefully keeping her voice even.

_can hear you_

She lets out a groan that really wants to be a scream and turns sharply to make her way back to the console room.

* * *

Her breath hitches at the sight of the console room when she re-enters. The pillars standing in a circle, drawing with their silhouettes the outline of a cracked, fallen dome, tops broken off, sharp ends sticking out toward the sky, like fingers of a hand, or legs without a body. Everything flooded with a sickly orange light. Like everything else lately. Maybe it’s her eyes that have turned orange. Something metal crunches underfoot when she steps in. It’s the custard cream dispenser.

Cleaning up the console room is slow and painful and the fluid drying on the floor sticks to her mop and now she’s just smearing it out and it’s not really going anywhere and her ribs hurt and the Tardis keeps making snide comments and then pretending not to have said anything and she’s sick of this so she drops the mop where she stands and leaves it.

She collects from among the debris the parts of the console that might still be usable – chronometric astrometer is snapped in two but they’ll live without it, conceptual geometer looks banged up but might still work, the dematerialisation lever goes on the reuse pile as well–

_sentimental_

She ignores. the. _sniping_.

–three out of four cylinders of the spatial geometer, file that under: problem for later, thrust diffuser, retroscope, both still in one piece, space-time locator, broken, of course, that thing breaks if you breathe on it wrong. She should make a new one. One that doesn’t _break._ The space-time locator flies across the room and shatters against the wall. The Tardis twitches.

_temper_

She snatches a piece of random debris from the floor and flings that at the wall too in a burst of a pointless urge to hurt something _._ It hits one of the remaining blue lights in a shattering of glass and a warning rumble and flashing red lights pulse around the room. The air crackles with irritation, resentment, _blame._ With thoughts deliberately left unthought in the knowledge the other can sense their presence anyway.

Dense heavy clouds of every bad impulse she’s ever had are gathering beneath her skin and she’s too exhausted to try and disperse them. In too much pain to dig up her conscience from somewhere beneath another pile of rubble. How many living humans has she used up and buried like an endless line of Jiminy Crickets? And she still can’t do right.

_make yourself useful then_

She kicks the base of pillar and gets a gust of hot air in her face in retaliation.

 _child_ , sounds particularly derisive.

* * *

With the space around the console mostly cleared, she sits down on the edge of the hole and looks down. She can’t get a good look with everything down there still coated in goo but she guesses she has to replace most of everything that was between the temporal motor room and the console. She can’t reach it from here so she’s going to need either a ladder, or hoist herself down with some kind of pulley system or– she looks around, there’s not much left to tie a rope to.

_antigravity field_

“Local antigravity field just around the console,” she says, considering. That would be preferable. “You can manage that?”

The Tardis bristles.

_yes_

“Okay, sorry for making sure you’re okay,” she says, not being very sorry and lacking the energy to really feel concerned.

_i’m not. fix it._

She throws her hands up in frustration and struggles up to go find some tools. “Working on it!”

When she returns with a toolbelt filled with tools, small pieces of debris she hadn’t cleared away are already hovering above the hole.

The antigravity field makes reaching her working space easier, but it doesn’t make the work itself any easier. She hasn’t even started repairing anything, just trying to get some of the goo off so she can see what she’s doing, but the Tardis is already flinching and jerking away with the slightest brush of her hand against wires. She is being careful because it does look... very bad. Layers and layers of metal ripped apart by the force of the explosion. Sharp, jagged edges warped and twisting away from each other to expose bundles of wires, half molten together. It turns her stomach. She cautiously reaches out to see what she can do about a cable sliced in two that’s throbbing with the movement of the Tardis inner workings deeper behind it. The Tardis jerks and she’s bounced backwards, away from the wound.

“I have to touch it to fix it!”

_it hurts_

“I’m sorry!” Meant to be an apology but sounds more like a reproach.

_this is your fault._

Biting, abrupt, uncalled for. Simmering with so much hurt and anger that she feels like she’s being blamed for everything wrong in the universe. And a part of her vehemently agrees.

She retaliates violently, instinctive defense of the soft wet rotten part of her that the Tardis has pierced so sickeningly.

“ _You_ convinced me to stay _,_ ” sharp, quick, the words hardly waiting for each other to rush out. Oh, this has been under her tongue for weeks. It’s irrational and unreasonable and incredibly unfair, but she wants the crushing weight of blame and guilt and regret off her chest _so_ desperately.

The Tardis buzzes around her, just as glad for the opportunity to fight.

 _you let her out._ Just as sharp, just as quick, more so because she doesn’t have to work around a mouth to say it.

“Didn’t hear you object,” she hisses, not waiting for the Tardis to finish her sentence.

_you let her in here_

“You did first!”

_you **liked** having her here!_

“ _You_ let her do maintenance!”

Oh, they’ve both had their arguments ready for a while, waiting for an excuse to inflict them on each other.

_you trusted her too much_

“Yes, I did!” Her voice cracks. “Yes, I did.” All of her cracks. Hearts falling apart in two, putrid mess of forbidden thoughts and feelings oozing out.

_900 years she had left!_

Her hand shoots out and hits the bruised metal around her.

_and now look what she’s done!_

Ice cold stillness washes over her. Eyes still on the hole in the wall, hand freezes in midair.

Okay.

Fine.

If you want to play it this way.

She lets go of the tool, it floats up out of sight, carefully pushes herself back so she has enough distance to extend her legs, puts her hands against the wall behind her to brace herself and with a snarl and all the force she can muster kicks a foot right into the bleeding pulsing knot of wires in front of her.

The Tardis shrieks and the antigravity field predictably shuts off. She plummets six meters onto the broken scraps of the temporal motors, piercing her stomach and gashing open her arms. The tool lands with a clang beside her head. Warm wet blood on her arms and stomach and floor. She spends a few panicked moments trying to get air back into her lungs. When they finally start doing the pisspoorest most bare minimum version of their only jobs again, and she has to concede that she isn’t going to regenerate right here and now bleeding out and suffocating, she slowly pushes herself up from the floor with shaky arms. Pulling away from the glass shards means her stomach starts pouring faster. She sits up, warm wetness drenching her stomach and legs. Her arms are wet and slippery and throbbing and leaking and her shirt is staining orange from a messy ragged hole. She would laugh if she had the breath to spare. The Tardis got even. She tries to inspect the wound but it makes her feel just as sick as looking at the holes in the Tardis did, so she leaves it. Not deep enough to kill her. Probably. Hopef– She grimaces. No. Can’t manage it.

“Satisfied?”

No response.

She stares at the blood pooled on the floor.

“I cleaned up yours, you gonna clean up mine?”

_asked for it_

She smiles bitterly. “I underestimated you.” Something twists in the pit of her stomach and jumps into her throat. She pretends she doesn’t notice.

The Tardis gives her a vindicated hum in agreement.

“Didn’t think that was still possible.” Unwanted feeling in her throat makes her voice go all twisty and weird. Because it shouldn’t have been possible. Not like this. She makes a slight movement to get up, making the wound in her stomach gush harder. She groans because it sounds less pitiful than moaning.

“This is going to really slow us down.”

_don’t care_

“Oh, you wanna stay here forever? Just die on an empty rock?”

Silence. Very still silence. Even the perpetual whirring in the walls stills.

_like the others_

Would that be so bad?

“We _can’t._ ” She gets to her feet. “Graham and Ryan and Yaz are waiting for us. They need us.”

The movement in the walls starts again.

She sighs and lets gravity pull her back against the wall. A bit of green goo drips on her head and she stares up at the hole.

“I’m not going back in there.” The raspy voice and trembling legs and muted panic are due to the blood loss. Definitely. Not due to the fact that her most loyal and constant counterpart, her home away from home for the past 1800 years, has just deliberately dropped her onto a pile of sharp scraps. She can’t remember a time they’ve been here before.

_dont want you to._

Right, because she had made her ship drop out of the sky first. They really haven’t been here before. She blinks hard and clears her throat.

“Start with the motors then? How far along are you with the new parts?”

_not finished_

“How long?”

Silence.

She rubs her eyes, smearing coagulating blood in them. “ _Please._ Work with me.” She drops her head and whispers what she’s been wanting to say to everyone for weeks, “I’m trying.”

_i am too_

She looks up, raising her bloody open arms. “Yeah?!”

_you **kicked** me_

That she did. Okay. She drops her arms. “Truce?”

A gust of hot air comes from a vent like a sigh, blowing her hair from her face. That has blood in it too. The room is tilting slightly sideways.

_no, that’s you_

Great. This is fine.

The Tardis offers up a list of things they have lying around that they can use to replace some of the less essential parts of the temporal motors. She offers a plan – or the beginnings of one, anyway – and the relief of some of the weight of responsibility being taken off of her almost makes her sink back to the ground, but she pushes herself away from the wall, pain shooting up her arms, and slowly goes to collect the things the Tardis listed. Then she can get started on rebuilding those temporal motors. Sitting down. On the ground. Yes. Good. This is fine. She is fine.

* * *

Sitting on the floor of the temporal motor room, broken scrap mostly cleared up, blood – well, it’s not like it’s going to make the motors not work if there’s a bit of dried blood on them – fingers in the first replacement temporal motor she’s building.

The Tardis’s regrowing of parts is going very slowly, but the Doctor is being very slow too, so she pretends she’s not impatient and the Tardis pretends she doesn’t notice her impatience. Truce.

She connects the first of the replacement components that the Tardis has grown and looks at their work in satisfaction. They are getting there. They have finished half of a motor already. Her shallow breathing isn’t as much of a hindrance just sitting on the floor and she barely has to move except to fetch the new parts when the Tardis finishes them. Her head hurts less. No concussion, that’s a win. The wound in her stomach has stopped bleeding – no, she hasn’t cleaned it yet, leave her alone.

_infection_

She waves a hand dismissively. “The body can deal with that.”

 ** _you’re_** _the body,_ the Tardis says exasperatedly.

“You want me to do something about this, you have to let me do something about that,” she says, gesturing, without looking up, at the hole above her head that still drips goo and bits of charred wiring on her every now and then.

That shuts the Tardis up every time. She keeps coming back but it’s fine. They’re both working. There isn’t anything else to talk about. A circular stalemate disagreement is as good a pastime as any.

No, there are better ones.

Yes, a lot of better ones actually. Now that she’s thinking about it. But they’re all conditional on having a working space-timeship so as long as they’re still working on that, it’s probably as good a pastime as any.

“Anyway, if it gets that bad, I’ll just regenerate,” she says, like it’s a joke. Like she isn’t drowning out terror with bravado. Like she isn’t dancing on a cliff’s edge hoping to fall. Like she isn’t tempting fate. Challenging the universe. Strike me down! Come take me then! I’m not going to stop!

Oh. Hm.

Something wrong with that. That should’ve been hopeful. There should be hope in that sentence.

I’m never going to stop!

She must be doing something wrong, because that felt way more desperate than hopeful.

Oh well.

I won’t stop unless you stop me!

Funny.

She twists two wires together and puts another piece of the temporal motor down.

_no_

She looks up in confusion, trying to track the conversation. “No? No what?”

_you can’t die_

“Rub it in why don’t you,” she mutters.

 ** _don’t_** _die,_ the Tardis clarifies.

“Not planning on it.” She says it casually, cavalierly, like she can still come up with reasons why not to. Like she isn’t desperately trying to keep her head above water. Like it wouldn’t be easier to just stop trying. Let go. Finish off the extinction of the Timelords. A fitting end for her CV.

Her deliberate word choice sits between them, accusatorially. The Tardis skeptically pushes forward a memory of a not-too-dissimilar conversation they’ve had relatively recently. She winces but then holds out her arms, demonstratively displaying her current not-deadness. She’s tired of this conversation.

“Got the next part ready?”

The Tardis hums her affirmation.

“Great.” She gets up.

* * *

She drags herself back to the architectural reconfiguration room. She’s so slow. How is running even a thing that this body has ever done?

“Can’t you put it a little bit closer? I’m walking a marathon here.”

The Tardis rattles exasperatedly and she holds up her hands.

“Just asking!”

When she comes to the architectural reconfiguration room and opens the door, instead of the the cool healing blue light, she’s slapped with choking heat and orange smoke. She slams the door and stumbles back, losing her balance, landing on the floor hard.

“What are you doing,” she spits at the ceiling.

 _not me!_ The Tardis responds before she’s even finished her sentence, reeling and scrambling back too.

“Don’t you dare lie–”

The lights in the corridor switch from soft blue to livid red with an ear-piercing noise.

_you’re the one who wants to keep going back there, not me!_

“Give me the architectural reconfiguration room.” She puts her hands on the floor, trying to push herself up, the wound in her stomach protests with a stream of fresh blood.

_it’s there!_

“Clearly not!”

_it should be!_

“Make it then!”

_it’s not me doing that!_

She raises her eyebrows skeptically, looking up from her pitiful spot on the floor. “What, there’s someone else who can rearrange your architecture at will?” Her eyes widen as she realises what she’s saying and she turns her head looking behind her. Sort of pointlessly, because something that can change the Tardis corridors won’t necessarily be here with her, or even visible.

The Tardis rolls her eyes. _no one here but us. are you doing it?_

She snaps her head back around. “How would _I_ be doing it?”

_you’re... Loud_

She hunches her shoulders defensively. The Tardis didn’t usually point out her bad telepathic habits.

“I can’t do anything about this.” She pats the wall. “That’s all you.”

The Tardis brusquely pulls away from her, making the wall flinch.

“See?”

_then what?_

“I don’t kn–” she starts as the floor behind her tilts up and the door in front of her swings open. “No,” she says, panic making her voice go high and halting and her skin go tingly as she grasps around for something to hold onto but there’s nothing and she’s already sliding to the door fast.

“No. No! Don’t you dare! Don’t you dare!”

Her knees meet soft and sturdy sand, warm through her trousers. She catches herself so she doesn’t get a face full of sand and the door slams behind her. Before she’s even lost her forward momentum, she’s turning around and scrambling up again, jumping for the door handle like the room behind her is going to eat her. The door handle dissolves into sand in her hands. The rest of the door follows, and then the wall is falling away to reveal a fast expanding flat of sand.

“Let me out!” Shrill and wobbly, her voice doesn’t seem to be hers, enacting orders of her body directly, bypassing conscious thought completely. The horizon is speeding away exponentially faster, revealing mountains in the distance. There’s the roaring of flames and punishing heat behind her. She finds she’s still capable of running, but there’s nothing to run to. No door, no way out. No way out, no way off.

When her legs give out the flames behind her are still just as loud and just as hot and anguished screams float up from the sand like spores wafting from fungus where her hands and knees hit the sand. She snatches her hands back and the hazy shrieking crystallises into words, individual voices, speaking Gallifreyan.

She stares, petrified, breath held and taken by the people with parched tongues and scorched skin to share their last searing moments like it’s going to save them. Their blistering pleas and prayers clinging to her skin like sweat. _She did this to them._

The fading cries of her ~~victims~~ _people,_ her _people_ – she did not do this, she saved them, she did _not_ do this – rising from the sand until instead of air she’s breathing the dying moments of the dead and the sky folds in on itself, layering lives and deaths, stacking and pressing them into each other until they become inseparable, thus the same. A ripple goes through the landscape, leveling mountains before having them sprout up again, like an optical illusion. The roaring fire behind her cuts out and is replaced with the sounds of exclamations and life in the city. And then with the sounds of screaming and death. Layering and folding moments until the Citadel is burning and children are laughing and Daleks are firing and time is being frozen all at the same time. Her time sense jolts and then strains as it’s being wound tighter and tighter.

She has her hands over her ears and eyes screwed shut so she can’t see the landscape popping like a bubble and flowing away like water until suddenly the air against her face is cool and time releases its choke hold on her and she gasps and drops on her back to the ground, eyes still shut, and breathes. Time is normal again, she’s not tasting death anymore. Her time sense releases slowly like a cramped muscle.

* * *

When she opens her eyes, she finds herself outside, on the desert planet, in the dark. Night. Is this the first night since they got here? She doesnt even know how long a day is here. Doesn’t matter much, she supposes. There’s something poking her leg and it’s... a broken aesthetics gauge she threw out earlier. She sits up.

“I’m okay, I’m fine!”

Wait why is she outside again? O h right, that was a bit weird wasn’t it.

“You okay?” she asks, turning to the Tardis.

When theres no response she gets up and tries the door. “Are you okay?”

 _yes_ , comes the reluctant answer.

“What was that all about?”

She tugs at the door as the Tardis hesitates.

“Why is the door locked?”

 _time-out_ , comes the strained response.

“Very funny. Let me in?”

_no_

She blinks, taken aback. “Why not?”

_don’t want you_

She staggers, eyes watering like she got punched. “What?” It’s more squeak than word.

 _you’re too loud,_ the Tardis says, rewriting the last thought.

“What?” she repeats, stuck on the thought now made unthought.

 _you’re too loud_ , the Tardis repeats insistently, like she’s going to make the Doctor forget what she just said.

She refinds her balance and propels forward again, gripping hold of the blame she reads between the Tardis’s lines.

“Can you blame me?” She whispers sharply, somewhere between embarrassed and angry and veering dangerously close to addressing the forbidden.

 _no_ , the Tardis says, more gently than she’s said anything in weeks, making her throat close up and her legs unsteady.

“Let me in then!” She yanks the doors again, reaching for anger because anger at least keeps her upright and she needs to stay upright because she’s not off this planet yet.

_no_

She kicks the door. It hurts her foot. And then again because it hurt her foot and because it didn’t make her anger smaller, it’s making it bigger, like poking a puffer fish.

On the third kick her foot meets resistance before it meets blue wood and she’s bounced backwards to the ground. Forcefield. She scrambles up and tries again and the force is stronger this time, hitting her injured ribs and leaving her without air, _again._ That’s getting really tiring.

 _stop. kicking. me,_ the Tardis says when she’s finished gasping.

“Let me in,” she exhales, memories she's been holding at arm's length surrounding her, pressing in. “Let me in.” Let me work, let me be distracted, don’t leave me out here with nothing to do and no one for company but myself, let me in. “Let me in!”

The Tardis doesn’t and she kicks and screams and punches till she hurts and then she keeps going because the memories are Loud so she needs to be louder and there’s nothing here! Nothing here to distract, nothing here but dirt and rocks and debris, which she throws at the Tardis and gets bounced back into her face, and the – **memories are so much worse in the** – dark, and the stars, twinkling, not the same ones of course but go far enough into the universe and they’re all the same ones, all the same stars – **we were going to see them all** –

“Shut up!”

 **– we can go together, just you and me, just like the old days** – **stand with me** – **run with me, Koschei!** **– it’s all I’ve ever wanted** –

hands outstretched, hands reaching, for kinship and understanding, hands finding each other

 **– she’s the only person I’ve ever met who’s even remotely like me** – **we’re not so different!** – **I saved Gallifrey** – **teach me how to be good** – **every star, that’s going to take a long time** – **on my oath as a Timelord of the Prydonian Chapter, I will guard this body for a thousand years** – **if you’ve ever let this creature live** – **thanks for trying** – **what did it feel like though?** – **there’s always collateral damage with you and me** – **you must have been like God** – **I keep remembering all the people I’ve killed** – **without hope, without witness, without reward. I am your friend** – **enough to blow the lid off their precious perfect society** – **when i said someone did that** – **that’s the trouble with hope** –

hands outstretched, hands asking, for trust and confirmation, hands rejecting each other

“Shut UP! SHUT UP SHUT UP!”

* * *

She sits on the ground with her back against the Tardis, knees to her chest, arms around her legs, face to her knees. She didn’t notice when the Tardis took the forcefield down. She hasn’t noticed anything for a while. The sun has come up, maybe. And gone down, maybe. A couple of times, maybe. She’s crying, maybe. She’s lying in a Schlenk blossom field, listening to his laugh, on her face the light of twin suns and the endless opportunities of the future. She stretches out a hand to touch his fingertips with hers and he grabs her hand roughly and squeezes it painfully and drops it like he wouldn't care if she lived or died and walks away and the sky turns dark and she sits up and looks at his fading shape in the distance and wants to ask why. Why did you do it Koschei? We were almost there. We were almost there again Koschei! I thought we could be friends again. We could have been friends again! Don’t you want this? Don’t you want what I want? I thought you did. You said you did! So why did you DO IT.

She reaches for him, for any sign of him, anywhere, but the universe stays dark and quiet. The most she gets is an echo. An echo of herself given back by an empty universe. Expanding universe. Becoming more empty space with every passing moment. She can’t hear him. She can’t hear anyone.

The Tardis door creaks open. It takes her a while to process the sound. And then even longer to remember how to move. But then she opens her eyes and lifts her head. The Tardis whirs.

_let’s get out of here_

* * *

They work without speaking, without thinking, mechanical. Being hands that work and fingers that fix and bodies that move and nothing else.

They finish the temporal motors and she connects them to the rest of the Tardis systems, working around the great big hole in the floor and all the functionality ripped away by it. It’s messy and sloppy and won’t hold for long but it doesn’t need to. Just for as long as it’ll take them to get away from here and – not home, but safe. You can have one or the other. It's a choice.

_spatial geometer is done_

* * *

She pulls a flat sheet of wood over the hole, stomach splitting open again with the effort, they build a makeshift console on top. Or rather, she builds, the Tardis backseat drives her building.

_hardly backseat, you didn’t put that on right_

It’s on fine.

_fine. if you want to be correcting for a deviation of four to six months from intended destination every time we land..._

... She puts the thing on again.

* * *

The flight is horrible. Where the Doctor can’t reach because they’re missing controls, the Tardis steers. Where the Tardis can’t reach because of the missing internal infrastructure, the Doctor tries to compensate with creative button smashing. Where neither can reach, there’s nothing they can do but hope as they trip over three planets, narrowly avoid a black hole and almost get flung out of the time vortex and into the void.

They make it. It takes a couple of attempts to get both place and time correct simultaneously and the landing is less landing, less controlled falling even, and more ‘count on Poosh’s bouncy ground and beg for mercy’ but. They make it.

They crash, and the Doctor is praying that the emergency repairs have survived the landing when the Tardis opens the doors and there they are. Her family. They’re here and they’re safe and they’re here again.

She scrambles to put on her coat over her bloody arms and shirt stiff and black with blood like it’s going to hide the state of her. Of them.

They walk in, loud and so alive, with their questions and complaints and she wants to say don’t ask, don’t talk, just for now, please be quiet, we’re going home, and she realises she hasn’t spoken out loud in a while and before that she’d just been screaming, so her voice doesn’t really come out right, but the Tardis seems to speak for her and they go quiet and still and she gestures vaguely to hold on and in preemptive apology for the flight.

* * *

They crash in Sheffield and realise, as the doors swing open pointedly, that the Tardis is lying on its side. The Tardis beeps for attention, crackling through one tinny speaker. She hasn’t used her voice in a while either. A cracked display flickers on.

GOODBYE

The Doctor, leaning on the console because her legs are untrustworthy, not having looked up yet, shoots a glance at the display and groans.

That’s rude.

The words flicker away and get replaced with:

GIVE US

Nothing happens for a second, she raises her eyebrows and a circle that moves almost like a buffering symbol appears. She makes a noise that would’ve been a laugh in different circumstances. The Tardis is more eloquent when she talks to her.

TWO HOURS

Ah, she was translating her multidimensional experience of time into humanly understandable terms.

_yes_

Thank you.

_yes_

GOODBYE NOW, the Tardis beeps loudly. The fam, startled, at the noise or maybe at the fact that the Tardis is addressing them directly, make their way out. Wrapping their heads around the different directions of gravity inside and outside the Tardis with barely more than a whispered word and a helping hand to each other. The Doctor doesn’t move.

The door swings shut. Click. Locked.

Like breaking the surface of a drop of water, all tension flows out of her and she slumps to the floor.

_crash more than slump_

Can’t she get to keep her dignity in word choice?

Lights flash around the console room to display the wreckage.

_no dignity between us_

A sob wrenches its way through her lungs and she crawls under the rickety replacement console.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, before more sobs hijack her breath. A sharp gasp hurts her lungs and ribs. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry about this. I’m sorry about everything.”

The Tardis becomes big and soft and envelops her and she cries into her arms until her sleeves are soaked and her skin is wet.

**Author's Note:**

> me: 13 has a really bad time in canon, she deserves a break, and good things, and some good feelings for once  
> also me: she's still on good terms with the tardis, let's make them fight
> 
> yes i realise ive basically been writing the same story four times in a row now  
> me: wow we've been writing about 13 and her grief and anger a lot, maybe we should interrogate why we're gravitating to that particular aspect of her character?  
> my brain: i dont think that's necessary, coincidentally here's another 20k about this same subject, have a nice day  
> me: cool cool cool
> 
> man i always get stuck on titles. i write the whole story, put the whole thing in here, click preview, and nothing happens, and every time its because i forgot to give it a title. ugh how do you come up with titles. my titles like barely make sense. i wrote the story i dont want to spend time finding a title im impatient. i wanna write the next story like


End file.
